A Film That Tests Your Patience Before Rewarding Your Endurance
I’ll be honest with you—I fell asleep watching “Pula” (2024). Twice, actually. The first time, I blamed my exhaustion. The second time, I started questioning whether Brillante Mendoza’s latest Netflix offering was deliberately pacing itself like molasses in winter, or if I’d simply lost the thread somewhere between the endless rain sequences and handheld camera work that made me slightly seasick. But I’m glad I persisted, because the final fifteen minutes of this film don’t just escalate—they detonate.
“Pula,” which translates to “Red” in English, reunites acclaimed Cannes-winning director Brillante Mendoza with actor Coco Martin after nearly fifteen years since their collaboration on the controversial “Kinatay” (2009). The film premiered on Netflix on May 3, 2024, offering global audiences access to Mendoza’s characteristically unflinching cinema—though whether the world was ready for it remains debatable.
The Story That Unfolds Like a Slowly Tightening Noose
Set in the fictionalized fishing village of Pola in Oriental Mindoro, the film introduces us to Senior Master Sergeant Daniel Faraon (Coco Martin), a police officer navigating the muddy paths and moral murkiness of a small, deeply Catholic community. The village is plagued by red tide—a toxic algal bloom devastating the fishing industry—as a typhoon approaches. But there’s another kind of red brewing: the crimson of violence, betrayal, and guilt.
The title works on multiple levels. “Pula” is both the literal red of the algal tide and a play on the town’s name “Pola,” derived from the Spanish “polir” meaning to cleanse. This cleansing comes not through redemption, but through blood.
The narrative centers on the brutal rape and murder of Patricia (Christine Bermas), a young woman planning to elope with her boyfriend Jeff (Vince Rillon). In a community where premarital intimacy is considered sinful, Patricia’s murder shakes the already fragile social order. What follows is a procedural investigation that gradually reveals the perpetrator isn’t some outside monster—he’s been among them all along.
Daniel, who should be investigating the crime, is the one who committed it. His motivations are murky and disturbing: a toxic mix of sexual frustration (his pregnant wife Magda, played by Julia Montes, has been avoiding intimacy), warped morality (he views Patricia as sinful for her relationship with Jeff), and later, unhinged vengeance when he discovers his wife’s affair with his superior, Captain Raymond Anacta (Raymart Santiago). The film becomes a study of a man unraveling, taking everyone down with him in an apocalyptic finale that feels less like crime drama and more like biblical reckoning.
The Characters: Trapped in Mendoza’s Unforgiving Lens
Daniel Faraon (Coco Martin) is a complicated protagonist-turned-antagonist, though calling him either feels insufficient. Martin, known primarily for his television work in the massively successful “FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano,” attempts to bring depth to a character whose psychology remains frustratingly opaque. His performance relies heavily on his television mannerisms—the doe eyes, furrowed brow, and that peculiar tongue-sticking-out thing he does—which occasionally pulls you out of the film’s tense moments. Yet there’s something fitting about this artificiality; Daniel is performing normalcy while harboring monstrous impulses.
Magda (Julia Montes), Daniel’s wife, exists in the margins of the story despite being central to Daniel’s psychological break. Montes, who has proven herself a formidable dramatic actress in television and is in a real-life relationship with Martin, brings genuine vulnerability to a character who could have been merely a plot device. Her affair with Raymond isn’t explored with any depth—we’re given no insight into why she strays, what she feels, or what she wants. She’s reduced to a catalyst for male violence, which feels like a missed opportunity in a film ostensibly about moral complexity.
Patricia (Christine Bermas) is the film’s sacrificial lamb, and the way Mendoza handles her character and death raises uncomfortable questions. Her agency is stripped away immediately—she’s defined by her “sinfulness” in the eyes of the community and becomes the target of Daniel’s warped sense of justice. The film’s decision to include gratuitous nudity in scenes surrounding her assault feels exploitative rather than essential, undermining any claim to social commentary.
Captain Raymond Anacta (Raymart Santiago) represents authority corrupted from within. His affair with Daniel’s wife adds another layer of betrayal, but like many elements in “Pula,” it’s introduced and left to simmer without sufficient development.
The supporting cast—including Allan Paule, Lotlot de Leon, and Elizabeth Oropesa—populate the village with lived-in authenticity, though Mendoza’s documentary-style approach doesn’t give them much room for traditional character development. They’re atmospheric presences, embodying the community’s religious fervor and social rigidity rather than existing as fully realized individuals.
Brillante Mendoza: The Auteur and His Contradictions
To understand “Pula,” you need to understand Brillante Mendoza. Born in 1960 in San Fernando, Pampanga, Mendoza came to filmmaking relatively late, directing his first feature “Masahista” (The Masseur) in 2005 at age 45. But once he started, he became prolific and internationally acclaimed. He’s the first and only Filipino director to win Best Director at Cannes Film Festival, taking home the prize in 2009 for “Kinatay”—a film so polarizing that Roger Ebert called it potentially the worst film in Cannes history while Quentin Tarantino passionately defended it.
Mendoza’s aesthetic is rooted in what critics call ultra-neo-realism. He shoots with handheld cameras, uses minimal additional lighting, often casts non-professional actors alongside professionals, and gives his performers only scene outlines, encouraging improvisation. He cites European neo-realist filmmakers like François Truffaut as influences, but his work has a distinctly Filipino character—gritty, uncompromising, focused on the lives of ordinary people caught in extraordinary, often violent circumstances.
His filmography tackles uncomfortable subjects: the sex trade in “Serbis” (2008), which was the first Filipino film nominated for the Palme d’Or since Lino Brocka’s work in the 1980s; the horrifying world of snuff films in “Kinatay”; political violence in “Alpha: The Right to Kill” (2018). These are films I haven’t seen yet but am genuinely interested in exploring, especially after experiencing “Pula.” He’s interested in the texture of poverty, corruption, and moral decay in Philippine society, presenting them without the cushioning of melodrama or clear moral messages.
“I want to show things as they are,” Mendoza has said, explaining his raw filming techniques. He sees his work as exposing naked truths about life in the Philippines, though this approach has made him both celebrated abroad and controversial at home. Some critics argue he trades in poverty porn and sensationalism; others see him as an essential documenter of social realities often ignored by mainstream Filipino cinema.
With “Pula,” Mendoza returns to familiar territory—a small community, a violent crime, the breakdown of social and moral order—but the execution feels less assured than his earlier work. The film can’t decide what it wants to be: procedural, supernatural thriller (there are half-hearted gestures toward faith healing and omens), moral allegory, or revenge tale. This identity crisis makes the slow pacing even more frustrating.
The Cinematography: When Realism Becomes Obstruction
Let’s talk about that handheld camera work that bothered me so much. Mendoza’s longtime cinematographer Jao Daniel Elamparo follows the director’s documentary-style approach, and while this technique has served them well in past films, here it occasionally works against the storytelling.
There’s this one scene that perfectly captures my frustration: a jeep backing up, but the camera only frames the bottom half—you can’t see the driver at all. The camera pans to follow the jeep as it moves, and only when it stops backing up does the camera tilt up to reveal the house. I kept waiting for this framing choice to mean something. Was it creating unease by withholding information? Showing us Daniel’s fractured perspective? But no payoff came. It felt like Mendoza refusing conventional framing simply on principle, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that a wider shot would have served the scene better.
Throughout “Pula,” the camera feels restless, circling characters, ducking behind obstacles, peering through windows and doorways. Sometimes this creates genuine tension—we’re voyeurs to violence, implicated in the watching. Other times, it just makes you wish someone had brought a tripod. The constant movement, combined with scenes shot in dim natural light (Mendoza famously avoids additional lighting), can make it physically difficult to watch, particularly during the film’s many rain-drenched sequences.
The film’s color palette is appropriately drained and gloomy—lots of grays and browns and that ominous red whenever blood appears. The perpetual rain creates a sense of inescapable doom, though after the hundredth shot of water falling on corrugated roofs, the metaphor starts feeling heavy-handed.
The Pacing Problem: A Test of Faith and Patience
This is where I must confess my failures as a viewer. “Pula” runs 114 minutes, and for roughly the first 90, it moves with all the urgency of a wake. Scenes linger. Characters stare. Rain falls. People pray. More rain. More staring.
I understand Mendoza’s intention—he’s building dread, establishing the oppressive atmosphere of this community, showing us the mundane reality before it explodes. But the execution feels self-indulgent. We don’t need quite so many shots of people walking through mud, or extended prayer sequences that don’t reveal anything new about the characters or community. The film needed a tighter edit, someone willing to tell Mendoza that atmosphere is good but momentum matters too.
This sluggish pacing makes the film’s structural issues more glaring. The investigation into Patricia’s murder meanders. Subplots appear and disappear. The supernatural elements—the ominous sky, suggestions of curses or divine punishment—are introduced but never developed. Characters make decisions that feel arbitrary because we haven’t been given enough insight into their psychology.
But then—those final fifteen minutes. Once Daniel’s crimes are discovered and he decides to go out in a blaze of violence, the film suddenly finds its pulse. The methodical pacing that frustrated me earlier becomes effective, each moment weighted with dread as we watch Daniel systematically eliminate potential witnesses and enemies. It’s brutal, shocking, and finally gives the film the visceral impact Mendoza has been promising all along.
The question is: does that finale justify the slog getting there? I’m still not entirely sure.
What “Pula” Gets Right (and Very Wrong) About Violence
Mendoza has always been interested in violence—not in glamorizing it, but in showing its reality and aftermath. “Pula” doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of Patricia’s assault and murder, or the carnage Daniel inflicts in the finale. But there’s a troubling lack of clarity about what we’re meant to take from this violence.
The film seems to want to say something about toxic masculinity, religious hypocrisy, and the cycles of violence in Filipino society. Daniel’s actions stem from wounded pride, sexual entitlement, and a warped moral code that judges Patricia harshly while excusing his own far worse behavior. The community’s religious devotion doesn’t prevent tragedy; if anything, it creates the rigid moral framework that judges Patricia as sinful, perhaps making her more vulnerable.
But “Pula” undermines its own potential commentary through its exploitative treatment of Patricia. The decision to show her nudity in scenes before and after her assault feels gratuitous. If the film wants us to understand the horror of Daniel’s crime, it doesn’t need to titillate us first. The rape scene itself is mercifully not graphic, but its setup and aftermath feel designed for maximum shock value rather than genuine insight into trauma or evil.
Similarly, the film’s treatment of Magda’s infidelity feels judgmental in ways that mirror Daniel’s own twisted morality. We’re given no understanding of why she strays or what her marriage to Daniel is really like. Instead, her affair seems positioned as partial justification for Daniel’s violence—not in the film’s explicit messaging, but in how the narrative is structured and what it chooses to show us.
The finale’s violence is more effective because it’s clearly positioned as horrific. There’s no ambiguity about Daniel as villain by that point. Watching him gun down colleagues and community members is genuinely disturbing, and Mendoza doesn’t try to make it stylish or exciting. It’s messy, sad, and feels like watching the inevitable conclusion of everything that’s come before.
The Reception: When Art Meets Audience Expectations
“Pula” has been savaged by critics and audiences alike. The film scored 27/100 on the Filipino review aggregator Kritikultura, one reviewer going so far as to give it -1 out of 5 stars. On IMDb, it holds a dismal 4.3/10. The criticisms are remarkably consistent: poor pacing, weak performances, predictable plot, technical issues, and a general sense that Mendoza is coasting on his reputation rather than delivering anything new or insightful.
Even positive reviews are qualified. Critics acknowledge Mendoza’s artistic vision and the film’s atmospheric qualities while admitting it’s “tedious,” “confounding,” and “unimaginative.” The consensus seems to be that this is lesser Mendoza, a film that demonstrates his signature style without the substance that made “Kinatay,” “Serbis,” or “Ma’ Rosa” (2016) genuinely important works of cinema.
Part of the negative reception may stem from where the film appeared. Netflix offers unprecedented reach for Filipino independent cinema, but it also exposes these films to audiences expecting more conventional narratives and pacing. “Pula” works better (or at least differently) if you approach it as a festival film, the kind of challenging art cinema that requires patience and active engagement. But most Netflix viewers are looking for compelling storytelling first, artistic experimentation second.
The film also suffers from unfortunate timing. Released in 2024, its treatment of sexual violence and its ambiguous moral framework feel increasingly out of step with contemporary conversations about trauma, representation, and responsibility in filmmaking. What might have been read as unflinching realism in 2009 can feel exploitative in 2024.
My Verdict: Flawed But Not Forgettable
So where does this leave me after finally completing “Pula” without falling asleep? Frustrated, mostly. Frustrated because there’s a genuinely compelling film buried in here—a dark parable about religious hypocrisy, toxic masculinity, and how communities enable the monsters among them. The premise is strong: a police officer investigating a crime he himself committed, while his own life unravels through betrayal and discovery.
But Mendoza seems more interested in atmosphere than story, in maintaining his aesthetic principles than in serving the narrative. The result is a film that tests your patience and occasionally insults your intelligence (do we really need that much rain to understand it’s ominous?) before delivering a finale that’s admittedly powerful but perhaps not worth the wait.
Coco Martin tries, but he’s limited by both the script and his own television-honed mannerisms. Julia Montes is wasted in an underwritten role. The supporting cast does what they can with limited material. And Christine Bermas is given a character who exists only to suffer and die, which feels particularly egregious in a film that seems to want to say something meaningful about violence against women.
The handheld cinematography that bothered me so much is simultaneously the film’s most distinctive feature and its most annoying tic. That jeep scene I mentioned earlier still makes no sense to me—I think Mendoza just films things this way because it’s his brand at this point, regardless of whether it serves the specific moment.
If you’re a Mendoza completist or deeply interested in Filipino independent cinema, “Pula” is worth watching, if only to understand where one of the country’s most important directors is at this stage of his career. But if you’re looking for an accessible entry point into his work, start with “Foster Child” (2007) or “Ma’ Rosa” instead.
As for those of you who, like me, struggle with slow-burn cinema: keep the coffee strong, the lights on, and power through to those final fifteen minutes. They don’t redeem everything that came before, but they do remind you why Mendoza earned his Cannes reputation. When he connects, even briefly, it’s devastating.
Final Thoughts: The Red That Remains
“Pula” is ultimately a film at war with itself—wanting to be an artistic statement and a crime thriller, to shock and to illuminate, to indict society while reveling in its darkest corners. It doesn’t quite succeed at any of these goals completely, but the attempt is interesting even in failure.
What stays with me isn’t the endless rain or the handheld camerawork or even that confusing jeep scene. It’s the sense of a community drowning—literally in the typhoon, metaphorically in secrets and sin. The red tide that poisoned the fish has its mirror in the red blood that flows before the film ends. Mendoza’s vision of small-town Philippines is deeply pessimistic: a place where religion provides no protection, where authority is corrupt, where violence begets violence.
Is this truth-telling or nihilism? Unflinching realism or exploitation? Art or endurance test? With “Pula,” I honestly can’t decide. Maybe that uncertainty is the point. Or maybe it’s just a flawed film from a talented director who’s made better work and likely will again.
One thing’s certain: I won’t be falling asleep during it again. Now that I know where it’s going, I’m not sure I can forget the blood-soaked destination, even if the journey there remains frustratingly uneven.
“Pula” (2024) is currently streaming on Netflix. Viewer discretion is strongly advised for graphic violence, sexual assault, and content that may be disturbing. The film runs 114 minutes and is rated 16+ for mature audiences.
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